Plants Are Alive: Why Recognizing Their Intelligence Can Bring Peace to Your Plate
Getting personal here, years ago I decided to go vegan. I loved feeling like I didn’t have to “harm” an animal to nourish my body (of course, I wasn’t thinking of the small animals that are sacrificed to extract our produce but ...). I felt great for a while until I didn’t. No matter what I ate I couldn’t maintain, let alone gain, muscle. Not everyone is like this but I certainly was... no matter how much I lifted. I developed severe gut issues and deficiencies. Mind you, I was eating all real foods. I did finally returned to eating meat. It was hard for me to rectify this in my head. I only felt okay if I harmed an animal? How was this okay? !
Some might say this article is a way for me to rationalize my eating meat but I do believe it’s food for thought...pun intended. What do you think?
Does life need eyes to feel? Does all intelligence have a face?
When we think of something as alive, we often imagine movement-eyes blinking, feet walking, hearts beating. But what if we’ve been trained to overlook a quieter form of life all around us?
Take plants, for example. They don’t cry out. They don’t run. They don’t make facial expressions. But they grow, respond to their surroundings, communicate underground, and even remember. So yes, plants are very much alive, meeting all criteria biologists use to define life... including growth, energy use, reproduction, and response to stimuli (Campbell et al., 2021; Taiz et al., 2015). But they express their vitality in ways most of us were never taught to recognize.
Understanding this opens up an opportunity: to see the world more fully and to heal the guilt so many people feel around food, especially when choosing to eat animals. Because here’s the truth, all life feeds on life. But, in my opinion, that doesn’t mean we have to live with shame or confusion about it.
What Makes Something “Alive”?
Biologists agree on a few traits that define life:
The ability to grow and develop
Metabolize (use energy)
Reproduce
Respond to stimuli
Maintain internal balance (homeostasis)
Be made of cells
Adapt and evolve
Plants meet all of these criteria. So do animals, fungi, and even some single-celled organisms.
But beyond biology, there’s a deeper truth: life has intelligence, even if it doesn’t have a face, a brain, or a heartbeat.
The Anatomy of a Living Plant
Plants have organs, just not like ours.
Leaves act like solar panels, capturing light to make food.
Stems transport water, nutrients, and sugars.
Roots seek out minerals and water while anchoring the plant.
Chloroplasts convert sunlight into usable energy (sugar), releasing oxygen in the process.
Stomata open and close in response to light, air, and humidity.
Even more astonishing: plants generate subtle electrical currents, communicate with neighboring plants, and change their behavior based on memory-like mechanisms. Their networks, especially when connected through soil fungi, can warn each other of threats or changes in the environment, no “brain” needed. Their "feeling" is not emotional or conscious as we define it, but it is biological, electrical, and, depending on who you ask, meaningful. This reminds us that intelligence and sensitivity can exist without a brain—or at least without one that looks like ours.
So, when we say a plant is “alive,” might we mean it in every sense of the word? It’s just a quieter, slower, and more patient kind of life.
So, What CAN We Eat!?
Great. So, does this mean we shall exist only on oxygen and sunshine? Please don’t try!
This is where many people feel torn. If plants are alive, and animals are too, what’s left to eat? How can we justify ending one life to sustain another?
I truly believe that the answer lies in understanding the sacred exchange that is life itself.
Humans seem to be designed, biologically and physiologically, to thrive on nutrient-dense, bioavailable foods. This includes animal foods, which offer:
Heme iron (needed for red blood cells)
Vitamin B12 (essential for brain and nerve function)
True vitamin A (retinol), needed for immunity, vision, and cell repair
DHA and EPA (key for brain, retina, and hormone health)
Complete proteins with all essential amino acids
Zinc, selenium, and other minerals in their usable forms.
Can some of these nutrients be found in plants? Yes, but not always in forms that the body can absorb easily or in adequate amounts without other harmful plant chemicals. That’s why many people feel better, stronger, and more balanced when they include some animal foods, especially during periods of healing, growth, pregnancy, aging, or chronic illness.
Choosing to eat animal products doesn’t make someone insensitive or cruel. When done with awareness and gratitude, it can be a deeply respectful act, one that recognizes the intelligence and value of the life taken, and the responsibility we carry in doing so.
A Sacred Exchange: Eat With Respect
Whether we’re eating a leaf or a liver, a root or a ribeye, we are participating in something ancient and intimate—a transfer of energy, information, and experience from one living being to another.
We may not fully understand how deeply the energy of the food we eat influences us, but many traditions, both ancestral and emerging, agree: the quality of life an animal or plant lives can shape the quality of energy it gives. Stress, cruelty, neglect, or disconnection can leave an imprint. So can sunlight, care, and vitality.
When we treat animals and plants with respect, whether through ethical sourcing, gentle harvesting, or simple gratitude, we’re not just doing the right thing morally. We’re honoring the biological and energetic intelligence of life itself.
Eating isn’t just consumption, it’s communion. You don’t just take in nutrients. You take in a story. An imprint. A lived experience.
So, choose wisely. Choose with intention and gratitude. And remember: the life on your plate once reached for the sun, moved toward water, felt the air or the earth. Now it becomes you.
Respect the life you eat, because in many ways, you carry it forward.
Your Diet is Personal
It reflects your ethics, your ancestry, your biology, and your current state of health. Some people thrive on plant-heavy eating, especially when their digestion, immune system, and detox pathways are strong. Others feel their best on animal-based diets, especially when healing or recovering from chronic stress, gut issues, or nutrient deficiencies.
There’s no need to force your body to conform to a philosophy. Instead, you can support your body, and your soul, by learning what it truly needs. That includes respecting plants as living beings, while also recognizing that your own life deserves support, strength, and nourishment too.
Choose with Respect...for Life and Yourself
At the end of the day, your diet is yours. What you choose to eat reflects not just your health needs, but your values, beliefs, and experiences. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, and there doesn’t need to be.
But whatever you choose, let it come from a place of care. Care for the life on your plate AND care for your body.
You are a living being: intelligent, electric, and deeply connected to nature. And the further we drift from what nature intended, or what we evolved to need, the harder it becomes to feel whole. Eat in a way that nourishes not just your hunger, but your wholeness. Choose foods that give back to you. Remember: you are nature too.
Your life is worth feeling & fueling well.
References
Campbell, N. A., Urry, L. A., Cain, M. L., Wasserman, S. A., Minorsky, P. V., & Reece, J. B. (2021). Biology (12th ed.). Pearson Education.
Taiz, L., Zeiger, E., Møller, I. M., & Murphy, A. (2015). Plant physiology and development (6th ed.). Sinauer Associates.
Trewavas, A. (2005). Plant intelligence. Nature, 436(7053), 441. https://doi.org/10.1038/436441a
Chamovitz, D. (2012). What a plant knows: A field guide to the senses. Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Baluška, F., & Mancuso, S. (2009). Plant neurobiology: A challenging interdisciplinary field. Plant Signaling & Behavior, 4(5), 372–376. https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.4.5.8710
